The FBI’s largest ever blow to child porn and the Deep Web, and its possible ripple effects

This week, something momentous occurred: the FBI and Irish police collaborated to arrest the alleged owner of Freedom Hosting, one of the largest Deep Web hosts in the world. We’ll get to precisely what that means in a moment, but the practical upshot is this: by some estimates, taking down Freedom Host has removed the majority of all child pornography online. Actually, it seems to have downed the majority of the Tor Network as a whole, which has far-reaching consequences that extend well beyond illegal pornography. This is a fundamental blow to a section of the online world which is at least several times larger than the web itself. But let’s begin by explaining some of the history and terminology involved.

Onion routing is, like the internet itself, the brainchild of the US military’s advanced research arm. Originally patented by the US Navy in 1998, the technology is designed to make online communication untraceable and perfectly anonymous. Named for the layered structure it creates, onion routing passes every transmission through a series of intermediary computers between source and destination. This means that it is both very slow and theoretically secure for both server and user. The technology was initially useless to civilians since its very premise requires access to computers all over the world, but in 2002 a free, open solution appeared: the Tor Network.

Originally (but no longer) an acronym for The Onion Router, Tor is a combination of infrastructure and software. On the infrastructure side it connects and coordinates upwards of three thousand nodes across the globe, providing more than enough variety in routing to fully realize the security made possible by onion routing. To access this network, the developers of the Tor Network created the Tor Browser, a Mozilla-based web browser that encrypts every piece of outgoing information and which is required to decrypt any data incoming over the Tor Network. To ensure security, the Tor Network can only be accessed through the Tor Browser.

In conversation, the Tor Network is often referred interchangeably with the Deep Web, but this isn’t technically true. The Deep Web (aka the Dark Web, Invisible Web, Darknet, and more) is actually defined as the entirety of all online information that cannot be indexed by conventional search engines. Often, this is simply the result of particularly old or arcane database programming — probably the most stark example is the deep recesses of the US Library of Congress. In the beginning, the Deep Web was mostly comprised of such unintentional content, but the ability to host sites that were both public and invisible eventually became an end unto itself. By 2001, the Deep Web was estimated to be several orders of magnitude larger than the Surface Web (the normal web), despite the fact that its randomly generated .onion website addresses are impossible to find without a direct link.

A series of search engines (Infomine, for example) have cropped up with specialized algorithms for plumbing the depths of databases that don’t actively wish to remain hidden. Today, the Deep Web has justifiably become synonymous with the Tor Network and the intentional anonymity of onion routing. Journalists, activists, and whistleblowers the world over use its theoretically impenetrable veil to protect their communications from governments and spies, mostly using the encrypted Tor Mail service. Not surprisingly though, the Tor Network has also become home to the majority of all illegal online activity. This ranges from databases of pirated material to online order forms for assassins to child porn, which has made the Deep Web both famous and infamous at the same time.

The note about him being left in a Correctional Facility until he dies? His cellmates will find out how big a paedophilic deal he was, so I don’t think that will be an awful long time then.

On another note, I don’t think he can pretend not to know about what was hosted on his server. The analogy is renting a room out of a mansion to a group of people doing the same thing. You know, and you’re turning a blind eye. There’s no grey area there.

Neutrino .

On the same note I don’t think that anyone can deny that the telephone companies know that their infrastructure is also being used for illegal purposes, (and they pocket the profits from that usage just the same).

Perhaps the directors of all telecommunications companies should be flung in jail until they die too. Just to be on the safe side?

Marc Guillot

I think that you are doing a very wrong analogy. Illegal and Immoral are very different things.

I can understand closing your eyes to illegal use of your network (sharing music, movies, …) but closing your eyes to immorality such as pedophilia, rape videos, torture, …. that’s a very different beast.

Both will have to pay it if busted, but don’t put them on the same moral ground, because they are not.

Neutrino .

Personally I think illegality and immorality are exactly the same thing. Dressing up ideas that are valuable to one group of people in as much justifying rhetoric as possible in an attempt to make that set of values seem more valid than other competing sets of values.

Fundamentally it all comes down to the same thing. The values that people hold in high regard (what they would call ‘good’, but which can be more accurately translated to ‘what they want’), competing against the values of others.

I’m sure the guy who ran the Freedom Host expected it would be used for ‘evil’ as well as for ‘good’ (where each of those subjective terms has as many meanings as there are humans on the planet), but I don’t see how the rhetoric of morality makes that any different from the case of the guys who made the first atom bombs or the guys who run the telecomms systems.

If they lock up all the peddlers of kiddy porn, then I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. But if this hurts one of the few remaining means of free expression that governments haven’t already destroyed/controlled (which amounts to the same thing), then that worries me.

We live in a time when governments seek to characterize as ‘illegal/immoral’ anyone who identifies activities of that very same government that to most people would seem equally ‘illegal/immoral’, and they do this in order to justify using the apparatus of the state to silence criticism and dissent and make those competing values ‘disappear’ (by throwing people whose ideas they don’t like in prison for extensive periods of time).

Whether throwing people in jail for the rest of their lives for holding ideas the government doesn’t like, or for exposing the government’s own nefarious activities is more or less immoral than uploading dirty pictures is fairly pointless to debate (since morality is entirely subjective). But it seems to me that in terms of the big picture of the development of society, permitting governments to completely monitor and control the activities of individuals would have greater negative consequences than unfettered Internet porn, because when it comes to human nature fundamentally I’m an optimist and I think there are probably a lot more people out there that would want to resist the immoral activities of governments, than there are people who want to look at kiddy porn.

Marc Guillot

If you really think that sharing a song and sharing child pornography are exactly the same thing, you have a very serious problem, one that I can’t help you with.

Neutrino .

Pretty sure I didn’t say that, but what I did say was quite a bit more complicated so not surprised if it went over your head.

Rivie

What is sad is that your statement did not go over my head and I still think your an idiot. “I’m an optimist and I think there are probably a lot more people out there that would want to resist the immoral activities of governments, than there are people who want to look at kiddy porn”. I hope you didn’t procreate and your offspring fell victim to this “kiddy porn” thing. Asshole.

Neutrino .

I concede that you win the argument. Your name-calling has produced a towering edifice of impenetrable reason that I cannot hope to refute.

brook

I like and agree with your analogies!!!

brook

I like and agree with your analogies!!!

VirtualMark

“Personally I think illegality and immorality are exactly the same thing.” – that’s pretty dumb.

Neutrino .

How so? Isn’t legality the formalization of a set of values defined by a system of secular rules, and isn’t morality the formalization of a set of values couched in religious terms? Seems pretty similar to me.

VirtualMark

Ok, some examples:

1) In the UK, it is an offence to drive without wearing your seatbelt. Yet who would you hurt if you crashed your car with no seatbelt on? Is it immoral to drive without a seatbelt? Same goes for any victimless “crime”.

2) In some countries, the age of consent is 12. So it’s legal to have sex with a 12 year old, even if you’re an 80 year old man. Would you call that moral?

4) What would you think is more immoral, stealing money or raping someone? Because I’ve seen many cases where rapists and other violent offenders get out in 3-5 years, yet bank robbers often serve much higher sentences even though they didn’t hurt anyone.

I could go on, there are many examples where law has nothing to do with morals. I don’t view morals as necessarily being religioius, I view them as having standards and knowing what is right or wrong.

Neutrino .

“Let me know if you think their laws are moral?”

But the very point I’m trying to make is that I don’t believe in moral absolutism.

You seem to think that things are either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and that it is somehow meaningful for you to apply your definitions of those things to different cultures. I don’t think any less of you for that, it’s by far the most common viewpoint, especially amongst the Taliban btw, and it would be moral absolutism that they would use to justify the very things that you rail against here.

But I don’t see that there is much to be gained in defining in such absolutist terms whether in other societies it is ‘right’ that girls have been married at 12 or whatever, and I think it’s more intellectually sophisticated to recognize that it only makes sense to catagorise these things in terms of ‘stuff you agree with’ and ‘stuff you don’t agree with’. In those terms we would be in complete agreement that child porn is something we find highly distasteful and would seek to prevent.

Incidentally I find it interesting that it’s predominantly Christian western societies that rate the sexualization of children amongst the greatest of sins, and yet amongst those societies it is actually the staunchest proponents of Christianity (the priests and bishops) that seem to be by far the worst offenders. Odd, it’s like a case of “do as I say, not as I do”.

The way I see it we live in a society where we enslave other species so that we can breed them in captivity and devour their offspring (I’m talking about farming here). With that in mind I’m personally disinclined to buy into the rhetoric of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ designed to make some of the things we do to each other seem more terrible than some of the other things we do. To do otherwise would feel hypocritical to me.

If you really want to understand my viewpoint and aren’t just looking for an argument I’d recommend two books. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Persig and “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. Both explore the relativism of values and the root of altrusim and morality, Zen comes at it from a philosophical viewpoint whereas TSG is purely scientific.

VirtualMark

I see, so if I disagree with you, then I just need to read more so that I can understand and agree with your viewpoint? The fact that I don’t agree, and see your viewpoint as wrong doesn’t count for anything?

Sorry, but I view morals as something that intelligent people have. We can break our society down as if we’re all animals, but I’d like to think that we’re more than that.

100 or so years ago, we thought it was ok to pay a kid to sweep a chimney, now we consider child labour to be wrong. A few hundred years ago people were burned alive for being witches, now we’d consider that to be wrong. It’s called progression and makes the world a better place for everyone.

Really, if you think that we’re just dumb animals then there is no hope for you. To me, there’s some things that most people can agree on – for example if someone were to go into a primary school and shoot a load of kids I think that 99.999% of people would agree that is an evil thing.

As for the Taliban, I consider them to be a backward culture, they have yet to see the light and understand why they are wrong. Cruelty in any form is wrong, it’s fairly simple to understand.

Lastly, your very comments on how governments imprison people who disagree with their views totally contradicts your comment about laws being the same as morals. China is a good example of this – they imprison human rights activists who are trying to help others.

Might I suggest that you do some thinking and try to understand what sort of a being you are. Do you really view yourself as an animal that doesn’t understand good and evil?

Neutrino .

Let’s recap.

I stated my opinion.
You said that was dumb.

I asked some questions and clarified my opinion.
You misrepresented my statements (I did not state or imply that we were just dumb animals), you told me I’m wrong and that there’s no hope for me.

At no point have I said that your viewpoint doesn’t count for anything.
At no point have I told you that you were wrong, or that your viewpoint was wrong.

I don’t understand your point about China. My viewpoint was that for governments to dominate individuals has generally negative consequences for society, to which you retort “but ah ha! What about China they throw good people in prison too!” I don’t get it, that point just seems to be echoing my original sentiment.

“Do you really view yourself as an animal that doesn’t understand good and evil?”

There are just as many philosophies that dispense with the notion of an absolute good and evil as there are philosophies that uphold it. The notion that good and evil are just relativistic human contrivances intended to justify whatever course of action an individual or society deems to be in their best interest is not a remotely new or radical philosophy, and it certainly isn’t something I’ve just invented all by myself and of which I’m the only advocate.

If it works for you to believe in an absolute good and evil, fine, I don’t have a problem with that at all. Just please stop trying to pretend that I’m the one trying to tell you that you are wrong for believing what you chose to believe, because an honest evaluation of what I have said does not support that conclusion.

Matthew Brown

I believe his point is that Law and Morality are equally the result of opinion. Though one is internal and one is external to the individual, they are similar in concept.

bwcbwc

You’re assuming that our legal system is a perfect reflection of our society’s morals, and you’re also assuming that our society has 100% agreement as to what those morals are. Neither of these are valid assumptions, in fact the failure of 100% agreement as to what is moral (for example, re: abortion or Eric Snowden) precludes the first assumption from being valid. For most people in this country, there are at least some laws in this country that are seen as unjust or immoral.

Neutrino .

You misunderstand me. I’m not saying that for a given society the list of things they define as unlawful is identical to the list of things that they consider immoral.

I’m saying instead that the concepts of legality and morality are closely related in that they are both formalizations of the values that are important to a society. But that doesn’t stop each society using either legality and/or morality to define individual values. They can (and do) stick into each list whatever works best for that society.

There is also much overlap. Because societies rarely choose to define laws that their society considers immoral most laws also adhere to that society’s code of ethics. However many things that a society considers immoral (e.g. adultery) are not necessarily illegal, so the overlap is often asymmetrical, and as you quite rightly say people commonly disagree both on what is just and also on what is moral.

Damon

I agree. illegality and immorality almost make up a ven diagram, unfortunately, the amount of overlap is pretty large. while you CAN have one without the other, you tend to have both. still, they are NOT the same.

YIKES

The problem is laws being passed deeming so called immoral acts(homosexuality) illegal. Child Porn would be wrong legal or not.

Seth586

Ok, so everyone knows this quote:

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
Let me start out with congratulating the FBI. I’m sure they have a ton of leads on child pornography cases, which is the undisputed moral high ground of this story.

The question still remains, do the ends justify the means? If we wanted to stop ALL child pornography, then should we have government censors in ever home…?

VirtualMark

Is it the hosters responsibility to check each and every site though? Do they have the resources to police websites?

jhambi

On the good old regular web it is, to a degree. If you are a site hoster and it is reported to you by the government that you have a customer hosting loads of CP or something like that, especially in a country where it is illegal, you can’t just blow that off. This is entirely different than something like copyright claims. At that point, you are culpable. Saying, ‘Sorry bro, not my problem. I just collect the cash for hosting it.’ will land you right where this guy is. He knowingly ran a haven for horrible stuff and it finally came back around to him.

Techutante

This is basically the same argument they used on Kim.Com of megauploads. You run the network, therefore you are responsible for the illegal content that has been run over it. They still couldn’t really make that stick, so this will be an interesting case to see if they can make it stick again.

Isael

Sincerally, what pedophilia is about immorality?
First of all pedophilia and rape are 2 different things.
Before the gay marriage was accepted in Brazil they used to say that: gay ppl make gay child (they didn’t noticed that gays are born from straight ppl?). They said also that gay couples would rape the kids (wtf?).
I have a small history to tell, when i was 5 years old my english teatcher sucked me, and I didn’t felt bad, actually i felt good and wanted more. That for sure wasn’t anything simmilar to a rape. Unfortunately she didn’t told me to keep secret that ppl wouldn’t accept that that easy. I went home with a big smille on my face and my mother asked me why i was so happy. My teatcher was fired, and nevermore I saw her. Untill now a days i fell i little bad about that, and since that age i learned to keep secrets.
What i mean here is that considering something immoral and trying to impose this ‘immorality’ to other ppl to others life are 2 very very different things, and we need the fucking anonimously and private choise to defend ourselfs from ppl that manytimes try to impose their ‘way of life’ to us and really dmg our life really bad. The kind of ppl that u are showing here to be…
I just ask to think. Our brain is a gift from god, use it, it really is very very delicious to use it, so, think a little more before reacting over other ppls lifes decisions with the rage of yours unconcient acceptance of cultural imposition that we all suffer when we are kids.
So again, pedophilia and rape are 2 very different things, as immorality and imposition of ‘way of life’ is too.

Marc Guillot

Your teacher was very lucky to only be fired, if I was the father that teacher would had expend a lot of time in jail.

Do you know the concept “consenting adults” ?. Well, you won’t find the concept “consenting minor”, because a 5 years old child can’t consent, he doesn’t have the necessary experience to know what his consenting to, he isn’t in a equal position to accept o refuse, because adults are in a position of authority to him. …

You better share your childhood traumas with a psychologist, because I assure you that the vast majority of society have the same point of view as me about the utterly disgusting immorality of pedophilia. May be you should start thinking that not everybody and their mother are wrong, but you. Because with your deformed morality you are in risk to abuse of a child any day (and a tribunal won’t want to hear shit about those opinions of pedophilia that you have).

Matthew Brown

The internet itself is used to search for child porn. Without people like you creating a market for internet access, pedophiles wouldn’t have such a well developed network to trade their wares throuh.

There’s your immoral usage of something, and you turn a blind eye to it by continuing to fund the very network they use.

Do you understand how illogical it is to blame an object rather than the criminal?

To quote an imaginary leader of an imaginary religion:
“The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.”

Jamie MacDonald

Telephone companies handle nearly all internet, phone and text communications – an unreasonable amount of traffic to actively police, and people would complain if/when they did/do.

This guy made a server solely for the Deep Web. He knew it’s a place where a lot of illegal stuff happens. Again, you don’t rent your house out to complete strangers then claim you didn’t know what was happening. Landlord’s responsibility, and he knew.

Plyphon

Hate to be “that guy” but that renting analogy is EXACTLY what you do.

We rent out a house and one tenant we had was growing cannabis on a large scale. We had no idea until after the police had raided the house and confiscated the equipment.

We weren’t thrown in jail and any damages were covered on insurance.

Not defending that guy, just saying the analogy doesn’t work lol

Jamie MacDonald

Well, I meant more renting a room, so you’re still in the same space as them on a regular basis. Plus I’m sure you’d notice if the tenant was a child molester – that’s my point.

Techutante

Not if he did it somewhere else, and was always nicey-nicey at home. Not unless you violated his privacy and went into the room you rented him and rifled through his stuff periodically just to make sure he wasn’t. And even then, anything you found would be suspiciously obtained, so you could say you found some panties under his pillow that look like those of a 12 year old, but the entire chain of implication would be entirely circumstantial. Considering the man ran/hosted an ANONYMOUS and ENCRYPTED service, back-doors aside, he almost couldn’t have any idea what actually was running over his servers. Plus, it’s like renting out 100 million rooms in your house at once, even if you’re a super-snoopy old grandma, there’s no way you have enough time in your life left to look in all the rooms and check for circumstantial evidence.

Jamie MacDonald

Still, there’s a moral obligation in the absence of a legal one. Whether he’s a criminal or not, he’s still not a saint by any yardstick.

Techutante

Sure, but that’s not something they can arrest you for per say. Being morally shady. Or Ethically shady, or whatever. It will be interesting to see what tactic they use against him in court. One of the things you can see on a computer is what files were accessed when, locally. So they should be able to get an idea of what he was looking at on his servers. I bet he can plea out.

Jamie MacDonald

It’s something they can chalk up as a great victory for PR reasons. There’ll be no-one waving a flag on his side of the stadium, not publicly. Through sheer public opinion and the right media slant, this guy may walk free, but he’ll never get peace after his face is all over the news and linked to paedophilia.

Techutante

Yeah, that seems like a way you can ruin someone forever, just a whiff of that and your credibility is forever ruined. True or not.

Jamie MacDonald

Hence why I take it as a matter of course, never to let myself get associated with that activity by any yardstick. I can’t imagine the damage it would do, and how difficult life would get afterwards.

Jamie MacDonald

Telephone companies handle nearly all internet, phone and text communications – an unreasonable amount of traffic to actively police, and people would complain if/when they did/do.

This guy made a server solely for the Deep Web. He knew it’s a place where a lot of illegal stuff happens. Again, you don’t rent your house out to complete strangers then claim you didn’t know what was happening. Landlord’s responsibility, and he knew.

Magnus Lunde

Nobody should go to jail just for sharing images they find online, and certainly not just for running a general hosting service that someone else used for this.

If you think people should suffer based just on which images they’ve seen CoffeeGrunt, I’d say you’re a violent and dangerous person.

CoffeeGrunt

Didn’t know I’d be judged for things I wrote three years ago, but hey-ho. Had to re-read the article, you should really be looking at up-to-date info rather than trawling old articles about convicted paedophiles, mon ami.

My opinion is moot, I’m a rando on the internet. I don’t believe people should suffer based on what they’ve seen, but if they facilitate or commit heinous acts, then prison’s the place for ’em. :)

Torqueobama

Yep, amassing power ‘for the children’ always works out so well in the end for the children.

Marc Guillot

Did they really have to publicly put down the servers ?, Wouldn’t been better to hack them and put some tracking files to catch all the sick bastards using their services ?.

VirtualMark

Yeah that’s exactly what I was thinking.

jhambi

Read the full article (page 3). That is what they did first. It is currently not fully understood, but the tor browser was infected by a virus that had been put on freedomhosting’s pages that pointed info back to servers in the virginia/DC area that supposedly belong to verizon/FBI (or a gov’t contractor as claimed on another forum).

James Tolson

im not sure i get it? they arrested a guy running an anonymous hosting service? because it was used amongst many other things as a hub for child porn? is that like arresting the boss of say Fedex because some paedo’s posted some porn to each other?

they would have been better to hack and monitor the sites to track the producer’s of child porn working with world wide authorities to hunt them down and publicly Castrate them and rescuing the children??

Graham Templeton

It’s most like arresting the owner of a storage company who knowingly lets people keep boxes full of child porn in his units and, in fact, helps them to keep those boxes secret from the police. The telecom companies that deliver the information would be a better target for the FedEx analogy, and are (IMO) as blameless as FedEx would be.

VirtualMark

What if the storage company didn’t know the contents? Did this guy know that he was hosting child porn? And is it his job to police it? I think it’s an important question, as it’s similar to the raid on Kim Dotcom.

Techutante

This has been my point about the whole thing. His host undoubtedly had millions if not trillions of items, there’s no way he would have more than the faintest idea of what was even on there at any given time.

FMTH

What about once it had been made public, that the dark web was a draw for paedos and child porn was proliferating on there? Could it be argued that by doing nothing except helping them keep the exact locations hidden, he was enabling a crime?

Techutante

Well, I’ll say he probably knew what was being put on there, in general. Maybe he didn’t want to muck around and see physically, as long as he was getting paid. But lets look at this example:

Are ISPs liable for consumers downloading illegal movies and MP3s? The truth is, no they really aren’t. There’s some spot laws in the world that might argue otherwise, but on the whole, ISPs have been given the ability to NOT look at what their users are doing, and to NOT have to censor every little thing. That sort of exclusion is so huge of a burden on the web, that a lot of ISPs would probably fold, and over-all throughput of the internet would be rather worse, as everything would end up being furiously encrypted as a counter to this.

Much like the dark web, where most of it is furiously encrypted. So you could say it’s a bit like an arms race? I think it mostly comes down to: A man was making a lot of money to look the other way and accept anyone who would pay. Ethically, morally, shady hosting. But legally? I dunno. Whatever happens in this case will probably set some precedents.

sarkasmi

Well he couldn’t have exactly provided an anonymous hosting service without keeping it anonymous.

I think the blame and punishment was heavily misdirected and should’ve been targeted towards the criminals,not the webhoster.

Am I the only person who thinks that it isn’t fair to blame Marques for the content of peoples websites? Don’t get me wrong, I hate the thought of child porn and am glad that a lot of it has been taken down. But I don’t like the precedent it sets by arresting Marques, it’s like what happened to Kim Dotcom. Should we also arrest crowbar manufacturers, as they’ve been used in so many burglaries? What about companies that make guns, should we charge them with murder?

I’d much rather have seen an article saying that the FBI had been working secretly for the past few months, and have tracked down some of the actual child abusers. Now they’ve blown their cover and people are aware, they’ve got less chance of helping any kids.

jhambi

The guy knew. If a legit hosting company was viewed as a walmart where you COULD potentially buy supplies to make meth or a bomb, this guy’s store was the shell across the street that only sells the 3 or 4 ingredients used to cook up cheap meth or make mustard gas – with a sign saying as much.
Also, read page 3 of the article. They infected his servers with a virus that was tracking and reporting IPs shortly before they shut it down.

RinVindor

Honestly all the did was make it possible for someone else to come up in the business for hosting. It isn’t even remotely a bright move, they’ve put a temporary hold on the main sharing location. Big whoop, like someone else won’t see this as a chance to open their own server in a country less likely to give up one of their people. An then what? Back to square one?

Michael Scoffield

How can the FBI arrest someone who isn’t a citizen of the US even if that person has committed the crimes online involving US territory. It doesn’t seem right. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for exterminating child pornography but I wonder how far can they go when fighting piracy. The FBI overreaches it’s authority. Fuck the FBI !

Cristiona

Didn’t read past the headline, huh?

Scott Charles

Finally! The creepy bastards getting what coming to them. I’m just sorry to the normal guy in Iran.

RinVindor

What creepy bastards? This guy is guilty of one thing at best so far, and that is taking immoral money. He never once has been accused of having CP himself. All this means is that someone else will step up and offer their servers to everyone who used Freedom Hosting and guess what? Not everyone on FH was a CP fanatic I’m sure. I’m sure there are plenty that were but they didn’t catch a SINGLE person actually guilty of CP.

William Washburn

Well I guess it’s time (based on what posted here) that the Fed/World govt’s start making laws about hosting companies policing the content of their posters. Now as we do that we are developing a cyber-police state… No? Do you want your realtime landlord to sart accessing your home to see what you have in your home, be it a land lord, mortgage company, note holder on your vehicle, etc… Be very careful what you wish for esp. recently with the gov’t stories, BIG Brother IS watching, you may get what you wish for.

William Washburn

Do you people remember the Declaration of Independence that the USA was founded upon, it worries me that that piece of paper has fallen into history and is not on our minds. Read it again and carefully, do we want to go through what happened again then now?

douzo

“The only possible way to spoil this achievement …” – what if pornographers, unable to get their fix from others, endeavor to create their own material? That would be bad too! But the gov agencies will track them down eventually, wherever they run to.

Techutante

Most porn addicts keep an off-site collection as well. All they really did here was to take down the central swap-and-trade hub. Once the next big thing comes along, they will go right back to sharing.

Antiloko

Not that I simpatyze with that guy, but… hosting that kind of contents is a necessary/inevitable evil in a service like that, for the same reason priests can’t violate the sacrament seal or psychiatrists their patient confidentiality: as soon as you begin making exceptions, nobody (good and evil persons) is going to trust the service you offer. Should we consider a priest a criminal because he knows about crimes and doesn’t tell anyone?

Carlos Slim

This article is way off base. A host was taken down and some users were exposed because of a Java exploit. The Tor network has not been exploited or damaged in any way. Also, this has nothing to do with child porn. It was clearly a targeted attack to scare people off using Tor and the deep web.

I hope this guy beats the charges. Actually, I would hope that the whole case is thrown out of court. It is none of his business what his clients are hosting on his hardware. I would not feel comfortable hosting with someone that had clear-text access to my content on the deep web. That would defeat the entire purpose of the deep web.

Techutante

Anonymous and encrypted are the terms to take away here I think. Best he could do is A. Shut down the whole service B. Play wack-a-mole with poorly encrypted sites or C. Just ignore whatever was happening and take the Bit-coins.

Marble Shark

“According to one Reddit user, the following message was recently posted on the chat room 4pedo:”

Yeah whatever ET – blame it on a Reddit user…

Schalk Dormehl

I’m a pretty radical libertarian, normally the FBI is all bad. In this case however I applaud them. Well done. Anyone who violate or aggress against the innocent should be held to account.

Unfortunately the nature of addiction is not to respond to consequences until they become unbearable. If there ever is a torrent-like hosting system I hope its creators find some means for widespread consensus to remove content. Perhaps some mechanism to remove content that you personally deem reprehensible from your joint hosting.

DisReverant

No doubt a great victory for everyone with the child porn aspect. But one can’t help wondering if they weren’t killing two birds with one stone.

anonymous

+1 for removing child porn. -9000 for ruining the rest of the good internet sites

RealityAlwaysBites

Since the NSA monitors all traffic, they have all the evidence needed, the question begs being ask…. why aren’t more big criminals taken down? Perhaps it’s because the NSA is available for hire to the criminal with the most money.

They only take down the little guys, the big guys pay them protection money, you could call it “Treason for Profit”…..

http://gcomputer.net/ DarkGray Knight

That is one theory, but maybe they don’t actually “monitor” all traffic, that would explain why more big criminals are not taken down.

timetomarket

No its because if they flagrantly used their internet tap abilities it would make the secret monitoring (or at least it was secret) no very secret if it was showing up in every court case in existence. Their priority would be terrorism and international crime which would be perfectly legal but I’m sure in landmark cases which have global components they might still help even if partially on US soil.

You would think snowden with all that top secret data would reveal that sort of corruption as the proof of how the whole thing is horribly broken but instead he just reports how they secretly spy on terrorists, and international interests which technically benefit US citizens (even if you don’t think is right, most world governments have a ends justify the means department for special situations) which I’m not one but always assumed that is what a countries secret service is supposed to do.

mymothersmysister

Hi Neutrino, just want to thank you for your refreshing viewpoint, questioning what the general public views as right and wrong. I share some of your opinions, and they are rare in this sea of mediocrity where most people simply accept what they are told and develop reasoning based on their cultural background. Once you take a step back and see that your personal belief system is merely a product of what you have been predisposed to, regardless of how strongly you believe that you’ve developed an objective opinion, only then do you stand to realise that the Bloodhound Gang may have had it right along. I have added your two book recommendations to my reading list.

derrick

I dont know why people are complaining about the government doin this they finally got rid of child porn and arrested the sickos and nutcases that think its ok to do that

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